


I time traveled across the multiverse and all I got was this lousy t-shirt

by KC_sunshine



Category: WandaVision (TV), X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Evan Peters version of Quicksilver, Gen, Not Beta Read, Peter Maximoff's POV, Pietro Maximoff & Wanda Maximoff Feels
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-20 11:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30004272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KC_sunshine/pseuds/KC_sunshine
Summary: Peter Maximoff POV on how he ended up in the MCU with a dick joke as an alias and found a new family.
Relationships: Pietro Maximoff & Wanda Maximoff
Comments: 28
Kudos: 159





	1. Chapter 1

As much as Peter hated to admit it, visiting his Ma these days was just exhausting. He knows he’s quicker than most people, emotionally, not literally, since he was literally quicker than everyone, but his mother, she was molasses slow. She was stuck in the past, always fixating on the mistakes he made as a dumb kid or getting upset with him for reminding her of his father despite the fact that he was nothing like that guy. 

So he’d been drained from his visit and distracted when it happened. There had been this rush of feeling heading towards him. It was like when Xavier was directing them in battle or training and didn’t have time to form words in Peter’s head. He would just send Peter an impression of what needed to happen and Peter would do it. 

This impression felt different than Xavier’s but not completely unfamiliar. It was deeply pained, somehow _red_ , and needed him. 

Peter didn’t think, he just acted. He ran toward that feeling, maybe faster than he’d ever moved before. He was vaguely aware of some weird shit going on around him, but he ignored everything but the feeling and getting to the source of it as fast as possible. Suddenly, the feeling stopped, so he stopped too. 

Whoa. Head rush. 

He was in a wooded area, on the side of a highway. What just happened?

It was. 

There was something. Off.

Dimly, he realized he had actually caused a sonic boom at some point towards the end of his run. Embarrassing. He hadn’t done that since puberty. 

But there was something...wrong. Wasn’t there? With the sunlight, the colors of the trees, the very air around him. And he was hot. Was it summertime? It had been winter a moment ago, right? When was he? 

Where was he? 

And he was dizzy. He was never dizzy. 

He should sit. Rest. Maybe just close his eyes for a moment…

~

He woke up in an unfamiliar bed. The walls were an awful beige color and the lights grossly fluorescent and he was about to zip around the area to do some recon when he noticed an IV drip stuck in his left arm.

Huh. 

So this is what it’s like to wake up in a hospital room. Peter’s seen it happen on TV before, but hadn’t ever experienced it for himself. 

And he wasn’t alone. There were several other occupied beds in this large room and there was a dark haired man sitting in the chair next to him.

“Were you watching me sleep? Creepy,” Peter says before he can stop himself.

“Just doing my job.” The man seems unbothered by the accusation, and brandishes a badge. “I’m Agent James Woo, FBI. I was tracking an anomaly and found you unconscious on the side of the I-80. How are you feeling?”

The feds. Crap. 

“Like I got hit by a bus.” It wasn’t exactly a lie, although nothing in particular really hurt, right now Peter feels tired in a way that he’d never felt before. “Did I get hit by a bus?”

“Not that we can tell. You didn’t suffer any contusions or broken bones, and there’s no sign of concussion, but you were severely dehydrated when I brought you in. You didn’t have a wallet or any I.D. on you. Can you tell me your name?”

He hesitates. “Um, yeah, it’s Boner. I mean Bohner, with an ‘h’. Ralph Bohner.” 

Agent Woo writes on a little notepad, likely taking down the name. “Okay, Ralph, nice to meet you. Do you have any family or friends we can contact for you?”

Half a dozen names pop into his head, but Peter dismisses them just as quickly and shakes his head. He’s not going to put any of his fellow mutants on the feds’ radar unless it’s absolutely necessary. He’ll just run back to Westchester when he’s feeling like himself again.

Woo looks a bit sad, like he’s upset that Peter is a loser with no friends. Peter feigns distraction, looking over at the TV mounted across the room from his bed. The Price is Right is on, cool. Peter’s totally planning on getting on that show one day once he figures out the best way to cheat his way into getting chosen to ‘come on down’. 

Wait. That’s weird, who’s that guy? “Where’s Bob Barker?” 

Woo laughs. “Don’t watch much daytime TV do you? He retired sometime in the mid-2000s.”

Sometime in the mid-2000s.

Mid-2000s. 

What the fuck does he mean, mid-2000s?!?

“Oh yeah,” Peter says, trying to keep the panic off his face. “Right. And that was a while ago…” He trails off, trying to prompt Woo. 

“Yeah. Sometimes I can’t believe it’s already 2023. Seems like a sci-fi future sort of year, you know?”

“Yeah. Totally.” Holy shit. Holy fucking shit. What is happening?

He looks over and realizes he maybe hadn’t done such a good job masking his emotions as Woo studies him and writes down something else in his notepad. 

But whatever Woo is thinking, he keeps it to himself. He stays with Peter for the rest of the hour the show is on and they both root for the single mother to win the showcase. He gives him some space when the doctor comes to check up on him and she lets Peter know they’re planning to discharge him in a few hours.

Woo asks if he can help Peter fill out the hospital paperwork before he leaves, which is fishy, but Peter okays it. He realizes his mistake when Woo makes sure to copy down the contact information that Peter makes up on the spot for “Ralph”. 

It probably won’t take Woo long to figure out his name and info is faked. Peter’s been paying attention to the technology he can see from the hospital bed and on the show and the commercials. He really is nearly 30 years in the future now and can only assume the feds have some sort of way to find out information instantly. 

He needs to leave.

He doesn’t really like looking at needles though, so he waits for a nurse to come by and he asks her if she can remove the IV. After the most agonizingly slow 30 minutes of his life, she comes back and does so with his doctor’s permission. 

Finally untethered, he stretches his legs a bit and runs down to the hospital’s gift shop. It takes him a full second to pick out an extra set of clothing, three history books, and a local attractions map.

He must still be off his game, that’s sooooo much slower than he normally is. 

Okay then. He turns the map over in his hand. He’s in the future, he’s hurt enough that it’s slowing him down, and he needs to figure out why he’s ended up in Westview, New Jersey of all places. 

~

This world is fucked up.

And yeah. That’s a thing. He’s in an entirely different world than his own.

With the life Peter’s had so far, he really didn’t think there was much left to surprise him. 

But nope, he’s now in the future, in a world where mutants don’t even exist, aliens keep invading, and 5 years ago exactly half the population of the entire planet just disappeared. 

What. The. Actual. Fuck.

Upside, mutants don’t exist, so he doesn’t have to worry about that persecution. Downside, there are super powered people here, so he can’t use his powers as flagrantly as he used to before Raven put a spotlight on them. He even found some reports of another super speeder, but the guy was apparently killed by bullets. Bullets. Peter’s embarrassed just thinking about it. 

But things are good now. Or at least getting better. He’s healing up, getting faster. He managed to find a mostly unoccupied street in a neighborhood that had seen better days and set himself up a home base in an empty house next to a lot with just foundation markers laid out. 

For the past week, he’s been scoping out the town, learning to use the Internet at the rundown local library and setting up some other safe houses throughout the state in case of emergencies, all just a couple seconds away at his current speed. 

He hasn’t felt that red feeling again, not since the first day. He’s not sure why he’s still here, except for the fact that there’s no place else to go. 

He spent half a day looking up every Charles Xavier in New York, and then all the Hank McCoys he could find, then Jean Greys, and would have kept going but Scott Summers is a really common name and honestly, he didn’t really want to find Scott. 

Agent Woo is still hanging around Westview, probably looking for him. The man tried to tail him out of the hospital, and it took some doing to lose him without giving the game away or leaving the town completely.

The third time Peter sees Woo, he decides to let himself get caught. He can always run off if he’s threatened, but Woo seemed like a good guy when they were watching TV. For a fed at least.

“Mr. Bohner,” Woo says, emphasizing the “h” sound. “Funny running into you, I’ve been trying to get in touch but it seems the phone number you gave me was disconnected.”

Peter shrugs, “Forgot to pay the bill.” 

“And the address you gave me?” 

“Oh, you know what? I just moved. The hospital was awfully disorienting. I must have accidentally given my last address.”

Woo looked like he knew Peter was lying, but he also looked like he knew that Peter knew that he knew and was willing to play along. 

“I got a new phone,” Peter offers as an apology. He’d only been here a week, but one of the first things he’d figured out was how much he’d stand out without one. He recites the number and Woo calls him immediately to verify. 

“And what was your first name again? Richard?”

Ha. He totally should have said that, then he could introduce himself as Dick Bohner. Classic.

“Sure,” he says, “we can go with that one.” While Woo blinks, Peter speeds over to look at the guy’s phone, but he had just saved Peter’s number as R.B. 

Disappointing, Woo.

Oh well, missed joke opportunities won’t keep Peter down for long.

“I do have a few questions about the anomalous readings that led me to you. Is there a good time you can come into our local field office?” 

Might as well get this over with. “I’m free now.” 

Woo gives him a ride, and infuriatingly drives at exactly the speed limit the entire trip. 

Something about being stuck in a slow car makes Peter feel like a cranky toddler. He changes the radio station no fewer than 27 times, adjusts the seat back several times, pretends to choke himself with the seatbelt, and when a song he knows finally comes on the radio he makes the power window roll down and up to the beat. 

“We’re here!” Woo says, sounding relieved as he pulls into a parking spot near a nondescript office building. 

Peter doesn’t have to lie during the interview. He says he was out for a run, that he doesn’t remember how he ended up near the highway, and describes the red lightning storm he saw as best he can.

Woo doesn’t look surprised at the description. “Do you know what I got caught in?” Peter asks.

“Not really. I do know it had the same energy signature as Wanda Maximoff’s powers, which coincidentally also were red when visible. But since she was a victim of the snap, it’s been five years since anyone’s recorded anything like that.”

Again Peter finds himself in a situation where he’s trying not to outwardly react. It’s so hard. He’s looked up so many of his former teammates, but it didn’t occur to him to look up his own last name. 

Wanda Maximoff. Red powers. The call he had responded to, it had felt familiar. Family familiar. 

“But she was snapped?” 

“Yes. She was there when it happened, fighting Thanos himself.”

For a moment, it’s just too much. Woo must notice, because he lets the silence stretch as Peter composes himself. Finally, he asks, “Who did you lose?”

“My sister.” Peter hadn’t even hesitated before answering. He doesn’t know how or why, but it feels like the truth. “You?”

“Three aunts and seven cousins. I keep thinking I’ll get used to those missing spaces, but I just never do.”

They finish up the rest of Peter’s paperwork and he signs off on his official statement, both a bit more subdued. Peter makes note of the layout of the office, and starts half-heartedly planning to break in and make a copy of the file Woo must be compiling on him, but his thoughts keep wandering.

Wanda Maximoff.

Wanda is why he’s here. 

Wanda is gone. 

He won’t even get a chance to meet her, much less help her.

But something had pulled him here. An echo of her?

Peter won’t accept that. There’s a reason he is here, he’s not too late, and even if he could figure out a way home, he’s not leaving until he figures it out.

~

He continues to adjust. 

Learns about online shopping and steals some credit card numbers from the wallets of billionaires as they sleep. Tony Stark’s security was remarkably easy to breach with super speed. 

Becomes drinking buddies with a dude named Abilash, and joins him at least once a week at the local bar.

Sits in on some college classes whenever the subject sounds interesting. 

Time passes.

Then one day, the snapped people just come back. 

Three houses on his block suddenly have families in them again, but thankfully his place was one that had been abandoned due to the financial crisis. 

The town is in chaos. 

The whole world is in chaos. 

He’s not even from here, but he gets completely caught up in the frenzy, consumed by reading through Twitter threads of heartwarming reunification stories and watching the news media speculating and then reporting on how it happened. 

It was beyond strange to find out there had been an epic, all-superheroed-hands-on-deck throwdown with the big bad and yet another alien invasion while he had been chilling in New Jersey, destroying Abi’s pal Harold in a Mario Kart tournament. 

His biggest problem was what to do now. Wanda Maximoff is alive again in this world, but he doesn’t know how to find her or what he should say if he does. 

He tries to practice a speech in front of his bathroom mirror, but it always ends up devolving into something like, “You don’t know me but I think I’m supposed to be there for you even though I’ve got the emotional range of a teaspoon and have no idea how to do anything to actually help. Sorry your real brother is dead, and that I’m not him. We don’t even look alike. And I’d never get killed by something as slow as a bullet.” 

Nope. No. He did it again, dammit. He should make a list. 

How to not piss off Wanda while trying to be supportive: 

Step 1: don’t make fun of how Pietro died.

Step 2: focus on shared experiences. (We’re both mutants? Somehow have superpowers?)

Step 3: ????

Step 4: Profit.

It’s a work in progress.

He needs a distraction. It dawns on him that he’s been in this world for months and hasn’t done a pizza tour of the country yet. That’ll do. 

He places the orders online, still reveling in how easy technology makes it to slightly stagger the pick up times, and then runs off to pick up his orders in West Hollywood, St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, and Brooklyn. 

Once he emerges from the resulting food coma, he sees he has two missed calls from Agent Woo. He’s about to call him back when he feels it. It’s coming toward him. 

That _red_ feeling, that _pained_ feeling. It’s exactly the same as it was, so it must be. It has to be.

Wanda. 

He doesn’t need to run to her this time. This time, she’s coming to him. How does she know he’s here? Does she know he’s here? 

But then she’s not. Here. Not exactly. She’s in the empty lot next door, and she looks. Devastated. 

He needs to help.

He’s just made it to his front door when the wave of red energy washes over him, knocking him off his feet. When he staggers back up again, feeling wrong and unsteady, the world around him is in black and white. 

Did Wanda just knock him colorblind? 

He doesn’t care, he just needs to get over there. 

Only now there’s a strange woman in his doorway looking around his house. Even in this colorless world she’s still somehow _purple_ to Wanda’s _red_. 

“This will do,” she says, and everything around Peter fades away as his world goes black.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s a weird sensation, being kept artificially calm.

Like, Peter knows this is bad, like really bad, but he just doesn’t have the capacity to care. 

Professor X did this to people sometimes, but Peter knows from experience that Charles’s calming always felt nicer. Like you were doing the best you could do and it didn’t help you or anyone else if you panicked. 

Peter misses Charles.

The purple lady, Agnes is the name he’s heard her use, is awful. She keeps cackling and talking out her plans for stealing Wanda’s powers, and sometimes she even asks Peter for his opinions. He thinks she has him under some sort of truth spell, but hilariously she’s asking him all the wrong questions.

She’s even calling him Ralph. 

She had dispelled Wanda’s illusion inside the house at some point while he was unconscious, and must have found the file he stole from Woo or the fake I.D. he made after hours at the local DMV. She might have been more suspicious of him if she’d found any of the other I.D.s he made, but he knows his shit; those are spread out at his other safe houses. 

Wanda’s magic seems like it’s stronger than Agnes’s, and every so often the decor of the house changes. Peter’s laptop keeps turning into a radio and then popping back into a computer. Often while he’s using it.

It’s really annoying.

After some initial resistance, Peter decided it would be better to be awake and aware, so he’s being cooperative. By the time color came back to the outside world he had been promoted to semi-autonomous. He gets shut down if he thinks about leaving the house or warning Wanda, but he’s been experimenting on how to think around that intention. 

So he’s completely focused on this episode of The Brady Bunch and only idly considering what would be the least helpful for Wanda right now. Not so that he could eventually do the opposite, no, of course not, he just wants to assist Agnes.

“TV’s rounded again,” he points to the formerly flat screened television and the witch sighs dramatically before waving her hand at it and modernizing it again.

“What do you know about Geraldine?” Agnes asks. “Is Wanda trying to sideline my character?” 

“Probably? You are a scene stealer.” Peter tries to only answer the second question, but when he feels the compulsion to keep talking he continues, trying to make sure Agnes doesn’t notice any hesitation. “And I don’t know anything about Geraldine, I don’t recognize her as a Westview resident.”

“She’s not from Westview? Interesting. I can use that. Thanks, Ralphie dear.”

~

Peter explores the basement while Agnes is out. He’s just curious, there’s nothing else happening, he totally thinks it’s cool looking and would want to keep it like this even if Agnes left. 

When he finds the big scary book emanating power, Peter carefully turns away and keeps his mind totally blank. 

It’s the 80s in outside-his-house Westview, maybe MTV will be broadcasting by now.

~

“I need to do something big. Something that’s going to throw her for a complete loop.” Agnes is pacing around the living room, mostly talking to herself before turning to him. “What would you do if you wanted to twist the knife?”

Ugh, Agnes is the worst. 

Best. 

He meant best and he wants to help. “Give her something she wants and then take it away again.”

“But what more does she want? She’s already created the perfect little nuclear family.”

“Family,” Peter repeats, trying to hold back on voicing his horrible idea. “Bring her dead brother back to life.” 

Goddammit. 

“Gods, that would be amazing. But it’s beyond me. I’m still trying to figure out how Wanda did that with Vision.”

“Vision is dead?” Peter had no idea.

“Yes!” Agnes looks like she’s sharing some delightful gossip. “From what I’ve gathered, Wanda had to kill him herself, to try and stop Thanos—

“And then Thanos won anyway.” Peter says at the same time as Agnes, although without as much glee.

She smiles that bright manic smile at him. “I feel like we’re on the same wavelength right now, Ralph. Are we vibing? Is that what the kids say?”

Peter shrugs, “Sure. I mean, I’m in my 30s, but that sounds right.”

Agnes resumes her pacing, looking more and more excited as she works out her new plan. Then after many

purposeful and attention grabbing ‘oh’s and ‘hmmm’s, she turns and points at him, with purple magic mist gathering on her hand.

“You know,” she says, “you are the only person in this town who hasn’t been cast in a role yet. How do you feel about leaving the house?”

Oh no. She doesn’t mean...oh shit.

~

This is so much worse than Peter thought it could possibly be. 

Wanda lets him into her house. Into her life and her family as if he really is her Pietro. 

She knows better, at least subconsciously, and keeps trying to catch him out, but Agnes’s spell keeps him saying the right (wrong) things. 

She’s just so willing to pretend he is her brother. It’s going to suck so bad when the truth comes out. The last thing he wants to do is cause her more pain, but there’s no way this is going to end well. 

And to add insult to fucking injury, Agnes spelled him some “super speed” that is just painfully slow. How is he supposed to be a role model to his nephews like this? 

And wow, his nephews. He has nephews. And they are amazing.

He loves them from the moment he sees them. He wants them to really be able to call him Uncle Peter one day. That would be so cool. The only good side to this ruse is that Agnes’s spell didn’t have any specific instructions on how to interact with the twins, so he can mostly be himself.

When Tommy speeds off during trick-or-treating, Peter and Wanda share this moment of pride and Peter knows he has to get himself out of this role as soon as possible.

Wanda won’t ever forgive him if he lets this go on much longer. He manages to get around Agnes’s behavior spell by being an asshole about Vision’s death, which is within the parameters and finally enough to get Wanda to blast him away.

Ow. 

Maybe he should have figured out a better way to do that. Too late now.

Once Wanda and the boys head home, Peter wanders out to the edge of town where the circus is now located. Agnes finds him before too long.

“Pietro, what on earth are you doing way out here?” 

“I fucked up and Wanda blasted me, giving her some time to cool down is all.” He points out to the newly expanded city limits. “She won’t be able to maintain this.”

“I think you’re right. It might be time for the next step. Don’t worry about going back to Wanda’s, go back home and stay there. You won’t be needed for the next part.”

“Can I keep the speed?” He asks, hoping he won’t have to keep playing at being normal when Agnes is around. 

“For now. Consider it a gift, for everything you’ve done for me.”

He smiles, hoping she isn’t paying close enough attention to see how strained it is. “Thank you, Agnes.”

~

He startles awake the next morning with Agnes looming over him. 

“You were right, Wanda’s spiraling. It’s time. I’m going to lure her over here.” Purple swirls around him as she locks down his autonomy. “You’re on guard duty. Stay out of Wanda’s sight, and keep anyone else far away from the basement.” 

Agnes is good, but she doesn’t think of everything, and Peter’s been learning how to play on the edge of the limits of her spells for days now. 

When Geraldine comes snooping around, Peter sees his opportunity. There’s just something about her that makes him think she’ll be able to figure this out.

So Peter intercepts her and locks her into the attic with him. Which is far away from the basement, if you think only in terms of this house. 

She finds Woo’s file easily enough. Wow, what a tragedy, that he forgot he had that in this room where he was keeping her.

C’mon, Geraldine. You can do this.

She tries to leave the attic, which would bring her closer to the basement, so he has to stop her. He uses the least force he possibly can, but still winces when she’s thrown across the room.

He makes note to apologize for that when he is able to.

He goads her into another fight, but since she’s not actively trying to get closer to the basement he doesn’t actually have to defend himself. 

So she kicks his ass and thankfully manages to break the spell. 

_Finally_. 

But then he notices that she’s still glowing and looking pissed at him.

“Oh God!” He yelps, “please spare my life.”

It breaks the tension and her eyes fade back to brown. “Nice to meet you, Ralph.” 

“My name’s actually Peter,” he admits. “Thanks for breaking Agnes’s spell. Sorry about the,” he mimes the flick from earlier.

“Peter? Okay. And it’s okay. I’m Monica. And now I’ve got to go help Wanda.”

“Yeah, we do. Want to help me steal Agnes’s scary spellbook that may or may not be the source of her power?”

“You are a surprising person, Peter.”

He grins, she’s really got no idea.

He doesn’t rush them down the stairs, instead he takes the time to describe the basement. He doesn’t know what sort of security measures are in there, but he knows there’s something. 

“I didn’t want to touch anything before in case it alerted Agnes,” Peter says, “but maybe that’s a good thing? Like if she’s fighting Wanda right now and gets distracted by her alarm spells going off?”

Then they’re the ones who are distracted by a commotion coming from outside. 

Billy and Tommy are standing by the basement access door on the side of the house, arguing with a dark-haired woman about if they should break in.

“Darcy?” Oh good, Monica knows her. 

“Monica! I got sucked into the expansion last night! I’m on the show I watch!”

“I can see that. What’s going on?”

Billy answers. “There’s magic in Agnes’s basement. I thought I could find something there to help mom.”

“Good idea, little man,” Peter says, “we were just thinking the same thing.”

“But it could be dangerous, they’re only 3 days old.” Darcy sounds like she is repeating herself and Peter figures this is something she’s already pointed out to the boys.

“Billy can sense the magic better than any of you guys,” Tommy argues. “And I can get us out quick if anything goes wrong.”

“There’s no time for this.” Monica says, with the air of someone who is used to taking charge. “I’ll go first and scope it out. I can somehow see Agnes’s magic too. Billy and Tommy, take care of each other. Peter and Darcy, stay on alert.”

“Peter?” Tommy asks. “Not Uncle Pietro?”

“Uncle Peter. It’s a long story,” Peter says. “I’ll explain later.” 

They finally open the door to the basement and look down at the creepy architecture they need to descend into. Darcy raises her hand as she says, “Am I the only one getting a very bad feeling about this?”

Nope. Peter definitely has a bad feeling, but that doesn’t stop him from following Monica into the darkness.


	3. Chapter 3

The basement is way creepier now that Peter’s not even nominally under Agnes’s protection. 

And the way Monica is looking around with purple tinted eyes is not making him feel more comfortable.

“I can’t really tell what I’m looking for, but everything down here has her magic all over it. Let’s just not touch anything yet.”

“Is the floor okay?” Darcy asks, “Because we’re all already touching the floor.”

Monica ignores her question.

Peter is beginning to regret not just super-speeding through this problem, but he had learned the value of caution as a member of the X-Men. “The book was over this way when I first found it.”

When they get to that corner of the room they all stand for a moment and stare. There’s a glow of power around the ancient, dark text that is visible even to Peter’s unenhanced eyes. 

Darcy speaks first. “So...we grab it and hope for the best?” 

“Grab it and run was the only plan I had.” Peter admits. 

But before they make any moves the book shimmers and fades out of sight. 

“What? Where did it go?”

Billy closes his eyes, concentrating. “Agnes called the visible image to herself. She’s taunting mom with it. But it’s only an image, the book is still physically here.”

“I’m starting to hate magic,” Tommy says, quickly adding, “Not yours, Billy! Just bad magic.” Peter gives him an encouraging fist bump to convey his agreement. Bad magic sucks.

Monica then alerts them that something is happening. “It was all constant, steady magic, but now there’s a pulse, over by that cage. Billy do you see that?”

Several things happen at once. 

Billy yells that the door is shutting, in a tone that Peter guesses means they’re getting locked in, and an enormous rabbit-shaped shadow demon jumps out of the darkness, taking a single swipe that Monica dodges but knocks Darcy off her feet. 

Peter nudges Tommy towards Billy, and the young speedster starts to get his brother out of the building at a fraction of Peter’s current speed. 

Then Peter runs over and shoves at what he realizes with dread is likely Señor Scratchy’s true form, but the demon is incorporeal to his attack, and falling into it throws off his momentum. He changes his game plan to avoid instead of engage.

He pulls Darcy up and out of it’s immediate reach and turns around. Tommy has Billy and is about halfway to the door that is still in the process of slamming shut, so Peter runs upstairs for the wrought iron coffee table and uses it to prop the door open. It won’t be as magic resistant as cast iron would be, but it should hold for long enough. 

Tommy and Billy are outside the basement now, so Peter is able to transport Darcy to safety (civilians first) and runs back in to grab the book and Monica. But as soon as he touches the book, there’s a burning, tearing sensation spreading across his body and the pain shocks him into slowing down. 

And dropping. 

The goddamn invisible book.

“SHIT!” 

“Watch out!” Monica’s warning gives him notice to drop to the ground to avoid Demon Scratchy’s massive and now corporeal claws.

“I dropped the book!” He crawls around on the floor, feeling like Velma on Scooby Doo when she loses her glasses, while Monica tries to distract the demon. She throws the empty cage at the creature and it actually connects, knocking it back a step right as Peter’s hand closes around the book and he starts burning from the inside out again. “Got it! Go, go go!”

Monica pushes on the cage again to drive the demon back before running for the door. She gets through and waits as Peter stumbles through behind her, the demon on his heels. They manage to unwedge the door together and it slams shut, hopefully locking the world’s worst rabbit inside.

By the time they get outside, the book is visible again so Peter drops it on the ground and collapses into the grass, gasping in pain. 

But the sky is red. And cracking. He can’t rest yet.

He manages to get up and nearly falls over again, but Darcy grabs his arm and holds him steady.

“I think Wanda opened the barriers of the Hex,” Darcy explains. “Billy and Tommy ran towards the town square. And I think S.W.O.R.D.’s inside too.”

“I’ve got to help them,” and Monica runs. 

“I have a car!” Darcy shouts after her, but Monica’s already too far away. 

“I could probably use a lift,” Peter says weakly. 

“No more super speed? I want to know more about how that works that by the way.”

“Yeah. Later. The book did something to me. It sucked.” 

Darcy grabs a blanket from his house and wraps the book up in it, taking care not to touch it herself. Then she helps him into her “car” which is actually a stolen funnel cake truck that smells strongly of sugar and fryer oil.

“Great, now I’m starving.” 

“De-super powered beggars can’t be choosers.”

“Temporarily de-super powered,” he says. “Hopefully.”

The sky changes colors back to fully red and then is almost looking normal again by the time they pull up to the town square. Before they have a chance to stop, Darcy spots one of the agent guys retreating and her demeanor changes and she pushes the harder on the gas pedal.

“That dick is trying to get away. Seatbelt, Peter!”

He barely has time to fasten it before she’s rammed the truck into the side of one of the S.W.O.R.D. vehicles. The impact knocks the breath out of Peter, but Darcy seems fine as she waves and offers a wry, “Have fun in prison!” 

Ow. Again.

Today is out to get him.

The crash knocked the evil book out of its protective blanket cocoon and Darcy accidentally touches it while climbing through to the back exit of the truck. 

“That’s weird,” she says, “it didn’t hurt me.” She foregoes the blanket and moves it into her right arm so it won’t brush against Peter as she helps him out and away from the lightly smoking vehicle.

He’s glad she didn’t have to feel like she was being ripped into a million little pieces, but he can’t help but be a little put out, like it had singled him out with the intention to harm him.

Peter’s still feeling unsteady as they make their way over to Monica, but he can at least walk on his own now. 

“Is it over?” Darcy asks. 

“Seems like it. Wanda’s collapsing the Hex right now. But,” she pauses and Peter sees she looks really upset. “Vision and the boys won’t exist outside the construct.”

What.

No.

That’s not.

“What?” He is all he can say.

“When I got here, Wanda had opened it up, to try and let the Westview residents leave, but it was...bad for the family.”

“Like when Vision tried to leave the boundaries last night,” Darcy says.

That was only last night? 

“I think Wanda took them away to say goodbye.”

Peter vividly remembers how devastated Wanda looked when she first arrived in Westview, and then his horrible advice to Agnes. Give her something she wants and take it away again.

There were no words for how cruel this world is.

Wanda’s going to need him. 

But he’s not with her, and won’t be able to get to her before she runs. And she’s going to run. He knows it. 

She’ll go somewhere isolated, where she won’t be able to hurt anyone if her pain overtakes her powers again. 

He found her once when he didn’t even know what he was looking for, he knows he’ll be able to find her again.

Right now, he just needs to remember to breathe.

He starts looking around, trying to make the world make sense again. It’s hard to think of what he should be doing right now. 

He tenses up when he realizes just how many federal agents are already mobilizing, and sees Agent Woo across the square with his FBI jacket on. Peter ducks his head and turns slightly, trying to avoid his notice.

“I think I need to get out of here before the feds start asking me questions.”

Darcy pats him sympathetically on his arm, “Sorry to break it to you, but Captain Monica Rambeau over here is the feds.” 

“ _Shit._ ”

“Peter,” Monica says, voice firm, “Don’t panic. I don’t actually know who I can trust at my agency right now, but I can keep you out of this if you need me to. And I know we can count on Jimmy Woo if you need to stay off the FBI’s radar.”

“We can?” Peter asks, “Woo’s on our side?” 

“He is. You already know him?”

“Yeah, he’s been trying to figure out what’s going on with me since I got here.”

“Here to Westview?”

“Yeah. To Westview, sure.”

Monica looks at him like she knows that’s not the whole story. “He’s going to want answers, though, real ones. I’d like them too.”

Peter concedes that it’d probably be helpful to have a limited number of allies who know everything and Woo had made a positive impression. “You’ll get them, but not here.”

“I’ve got a plan,” Darcy interjects, “Monica, you stay here to deal with all this. I’m going to requisition one of those scary S.W.O.R.D. SUVs before anyone knows I don’t have the authority to do that and pack up my equipment.”

Peter hates traveling by car, but still asks, “Can you bring me somewhere when you’re done?” 

“Of course.” 

“Jimmy’s going to want you here for the debrief,” Monica says to Darcy. “Or be hurt that you didn’t stick around to at least say goodbye and exchange contact information.”

Darcy laughs. “We are way past that, we already have plans to meet for brunch this weekend. And you were invited too, don’t pout, you just didn’t know it yet. But if he asks, tell him I said ‘debriefs are for the weak’, and then do some spy shit to get him a message to meet us at that diner in Eastview in, what do you think, four hours?”

While Monica and Darcy are distracted by making plans, Peter manages to sneak a note for Wanda into the evil book without making physical contact with it. He’d written it out late last night with half a plan to see if he could pass it to her through one of the twins, but now…

Now, he’s just going to hope that Wanda won’t be leaving something this powerful in the inept hands of federal agents, present company and Woo excluded. 

~

Peter gets Darcy to bring him to the closest of his safe houses and he takes the time to shower to physically and psychologically clean off the lingering grossness of Agnes-Agatha’s magic mind control. 

He activates his backup phone while Darcy freshens up, and after putting some extra essential items in his already packed go-bag, he braces himself for the slow ride back towards the incoming interrogation.

They arrive at the diner first and Peter indulges by ordering more than half of the breakfast items available. Darcy just lifts a judgmental eyebrow when he finishes ordering.

“I’ve got a fast metabolism.”

Monica and Jimmy, which is much less intimidating than thinking of him as Agent Woo, arrive just after their food and Peter busies himself eating to delay the questions a few minutes longer.

But he can’t put it off forever.

Jimmy starts, “So, Monica tells me you’re going by Peter now. Are we going with Peter Bohner on the report we’re not writing?”

Peter can’t help but grin, call him immature, but it’s still funny.

“Sorry about the dick jokes. But, Peter isn’t a lie. It is still a dick joke, but also my name. I’m Peter Maximoff. Well, technically my birth certificate says Pietro Maximoff, but I grew up as Peter.”

Darcy gasps dramatically at the reveal. “But you’re not. I mean, I’ve seen pictures of Pietro from S.H.I.E.L.D.’s files on Sokovia. You look nothing like him.”

“I’m not Wanda’s twin Pietro, no. But I’m also not _not_ her brother. Like you know ‘brother from another mother’? I’m kind of like her brother from another universe. I just couldn’t figure out a good way to make that rhyme.” 

“And Agatha didn’t give you your super speed.” Darcy guesses.

“Nope, I was born with it.”

Jimmy looks surprised. “Born? We haven’t recorded anyone with inborn superhuman abilities yet, they’re always triggered by external forces.”

“That’s how I knew this was a different world. There are a lot of people like me in my universe. And we’re not a secret.” Not anymore.

“There are lots of super speedsters?” Jimmy asks.

“No, lots of people with a lot of different powers. It’s due to genetic mutation. Most of us grow up normal, and then puberty hits and bam! Superpowers. The normal homo sapiens tend to call us mutants.”

“Wait, are you a different species?” Darcy asks. “I know so many scientists who’d love to study you.”

“And that’s why I wasn’t going to tell anyone any of this!” Peter’s still not totally comfortable with how honest he’s being. “On my world, the geneticists call us a subspecies, homo sapiens superior. And yes, it was a self-important mutant geneticist who made the discovery and is responsible for the name.”

Monica speaks up for the first time since she ordered dinner. “Just to clarify, you’re Pietro Maximoff from another world? Were you born in Sokovia? Do you have a twin?”

“I’m not a twin, no. And I was born in Slovakia, my mom and I moved to the US when I was two. We don’t have a Sokovia in my world.”

“Your mom, was she Iryna Maximoff?”

“Yeah, she Americanized it to Irene, but that’s what my babka called her.”

“And Oleg was your dad?”

Peter winces, he should have predicted this question coming. “No, Oleg was my mom’s husband, but he died before my time. My ma, she was a young widow when she, uh, ‘befriended’ a charming asshole who was laying low in her village while hunting Nazis throughout Eastern Europe.” 

Darcy coughs on her milkshake. “A Nazi hunter?”

“I mean, he was a Holocaust survivor, it’s not like I think he was wrong to hunt down Nazis, the actual asshole stuff came later.”

“How old is your dad?”

“Not _that_ old. Oh, I forgot about the time difference. Right. It was 1992 when I left my world.”

“I knew it!” Jimmy sounds vindicated. “I knew you were surprised by the year when you woke up in the hospital.”

“Hospital? Wait. Peter was your witness in Westview,” Monica says. “That’s why you were the first to find the Hex.”

“Why didn’t you say you knew him when he showed up on the show?” Darcy asks.

Show? He remembers Darcy saying something about a show when he first met her, but there hadn’t been time to process it then.

“What show?” Peter asks, but Jimmy is talking about how they hadn’t been able to find any info on “Ralph”, so he hadn’t mentioned meeting him before.

“How long have you been here?” Monica asks. “You got to Westview before Wanda?”

But Peter just repeats, “what show?”

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I know where this is going, but am exactly not sure how I’ll get there or how long it’ll take. I’m not very prolific as a fanfic writer, and I’ve never posted a W.I.P. before, but I wanted to write the fic I needed to see in the world after finishing WandaVision. Concrit is welcome.


End file.
